which carrier for traveling/ocational activation

[rz-jacks]

Hi, I'm trying to make up my mind as to which carrier to choose from and I was hoping some data users could chime in with their recomendations (please don't recommend your carrier just because its YOUR carrier)

Ok so I'm getting my college education here in the US and I will mostly use my ipad in my apt and on campus (campus is covered is really good wifi) BUT

being an international student I have to travel around and mostly vacation here in the US, mostly to Manhattan houston and miami, so the only times I would purchase a month of data is when I either go on vacation, I'm back home (both att and VZN work in this case), roadtrips or when I'm at the airport and dont want to pay for crappy slow airport internet.

Also I might use data to download weather while flying around at like 4000ft (currently getting my private pilot's licence). The main reason I got the 4g ipad is because of the gps...

Based on this can anyone with these types of experiences provide some feedback on which carrier is preferable for this sort of random usage?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Negativism]

Wirelessly posted

Id bet you get a better Verizon sig flying over the middle of nowhere than a AT&Tsig flying in NY city.

 

[Eddie Bombay]

You should go with Verizon but be careful since its illegal to fly and use your phone in the States. Should be fine in Canada or anywhere else though. Verizon or AT&T when traveling at the speed of an aircraft you're going to have a really horrible connection if you actually get one.

 

[Snoosedaddy]

I would choose the one with the best spell checker.

 

[IllIllIll]

You should go with Verizon but be careful since its illegal to fly and use your phone in the States. Should be fine in Canada or anywhere else though. Verizon or AT&T when traveling at the speed of an aircraft you're going to have a really horrible connection if you actually get one.

Wow...so much misinformation in so short a post.

Assuming you're talking about commercial flight, Canada has also banned cellphone/cellular data use on planes flying in its airspace. There are some commercial flights in European airspace that allow mobile phone use, but in general the practice is not allowed in the majority of the world.

"Traveling at the speed of an aircraft" has no bearing on signal quality. Radio waves travel pretty much at the speed of light, so traveling at 200-600mph in a plane has little to no influence on signal quality in terms of Doppler effect. Additionally, since you're up in the air you have more direct line-of-sight connections to cell towers, so in fact your signal would be BETTER and not worse. Once you go higher than 5000 feet distance from cell towers comes into play and signal strength degrades.

 

[rz-jacks]

You should go with Verizon but be careful since its illegal to fly and use your phone in the States. Should be fine in Canada or anywhere else though. Verizon or AT&T when traveling at the speed of an aircraft you're going to have a really horrible connection if you actually get one.

Its legal to use your cellphone/data aboard a private aircraft. no problems there, plus the only thing I need it for is to download the most recent weather conditions when approaching my destination airport since I use foreflight (aviation app) the plane I'll be flying cruises at about 180mph ground speed with some help from a tailwind and I?ll usually be flying at about 4000ft as I mentioned, I have att on my phone and I get pretty good reception on 3g, I even called my instructor from inside the plane on a solo cross country flight hahaha but the only times I really want signal is when I'm coming in for a landing so I can double check the latest weather observations. but honestly this wont be a big use for me, since most airports have automated weather observations.

my MOST LIKELY scenerios are when I'm traveling and I want to have internet for the shuttle ride/car ride, airport (waiting to board), and when I'm staying at say a hotel or apt where they're either no wifi or they charge inmense amounts of money (some hotels can charge up to 15$ a day.....) and I wanna stream movies and tv episodes and stuff like that.

 

[rz-jacks]

bump

 

[Arnezie]

Well if speed on 3G is important then AT&T is you most obvious choice. Verizon is decent on 4g but can't touch AT&T in most areas , my .02 and yes I travel all over the country not like some giving there opinions on here